Chapter Thirty-Four
The Queen’s power has grown—the halls are not the way I remember, like someone has taken the castle apart and rearranged it. It takes far too long to find our way.
“Listen,” I say as we climb a staircase that I think will lead us toward the Queen’s rooms. “If something else attacks us, I may have to try to use my shadows. If that happens, you have to run. They’re dangerous, and I can’t control them.”
Cerise nods. “Sure thing, Your Highness.”
“Please don’t start calling me that.”
She grins at me devilishly, like she has no intention of obeying that particular order.
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on with you and Bianca?” I pant as we climb further stairs, eager to pay her back for her teasing and to distract myself from the task at hand.
“Nothing’s going on,” Cerise says, keeping pace with Waffles beside me.
I glance sideways at her, ready to call her bluff, but then I catch the anxious set of her jaw. “What is it?”
Cerise sighs, glancing sideways at me. “It wasn’t Bianca in my room the other night. It was Belladonna.”
I stop dead in my tracks. “Belladonna?”
She grabs my elbow and pulls me farther down the hall. We can’t stop our search, even for this. “We slept together after the All Hallows Eve masquerade. She was that girl in the swan mask, remember?”
“But …” I don’t need to say my thoughts aloud—that she hates the Roquelarts. She judged me so harshly for being with Roze in the beginning.
“I know, I know,” she growls, stuffing a hand in her pocket.
“At the ball, I didn’t realize it was her behind the mask at first. I tried to write it off as a stupid mistake, but I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Anyway, that’s part of why I crashed your engagement party. I wanted to see her again. I had to.”
“And here I thought you were there to see me.”
She elbows me in the side, and I almost manage to smile, but my guilty conscience squashes the impulse. You killed someone, it whispers.
“Belladonna is … intense,” I say as we pass down another hall.
Cerise snorts. “Yeah. I like it.” She glances up at a painting of a robust Roquelart king holding a musket, his foot proudly propped on the body of a bear.
“It’s sort of like you said. Not all the Roquelarts are the same, and Belladonna …
I know she seems nasty. But you have to realize it’s all a mask. ”
I think back to her pouring wine on my lap. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Cerise shakes her head. “It’s how she deals with having Queen Maria for a mother.
She keeps everyone at arm’s length, but she does more to protect Roze and her sisters than you can imagine.
She takes the brunt of her mother’s torture so that they don’t have to.
No one sees it. So yeah, it makes her a little intense. ”
I remember the fear in Belladonna’s eyes in the catacombs, the look of a beaten dog, and the way she warned Roze about the Queen, how she tried to save him.
Somewhere beneath that exterior of pure poison, Belladonna cares about her sisters, about Roze.
What exactly has Queen Maria put her through?
What does it mean to be the Crown Princess in such a kingdom, where the Queen unleashes pure terrors?
Does she save the worst of her terrors for her eldest daughter?
We have to be getting closer to the Queen’s room—the halls here are untouched, but the search is still taking far too long.
As we ascend the stairs into the darkness, I think about Roze and what he might be enduring at his mother’s hands—I don’t want to think my darkest thoughts, that it might already be too late.
But León was right—it’s time to stop being afraid. It’s time to be a thing to fear.
None of the lamps are lit in the halls of the royal residences.
All we have is the dim, blue predawn light that manages to pierce the Mists outside the windows.
As we creep down thickly carpeted corridors, a pungent smell fills the air.
I struggle to place it at first, but it gets stronger as we continue.
The smell is twisted and slightly … off. Like sour milk. Like bog water.
“Vi,” Cerise whispers.
“I smell it,” I say. We turn down the hall toward what I think are the bedrooms and stop.
Because the floor ahead is completely covered in a thick layer of water.
It’s putrid, a deep green-black, and bubbling toward us, slowly covering the last of the floor.
Cerise, Waffles, and I back away from it, not letting the foul water touch our feet.
And then I see something break the surface of the water.
Waffles starts to growl.
The thing rises from the water—
Its shoulder appears first. Then a head—bald, slimy, and hairless with lake muck hanging from its scalp in long ropes.
It lifts an arm, distended at an odd angle, and rises up on its haunches.
It’s shaped like a human, but its limbs are too long for its body.
Its bony form, with translucent, grayish skin, slick with slime, rises over the water like a wraith.
“Cerise—”
I back up half a step, a breath away from running.
But in that breath, it scurries toward us, fast as a spider.
I scream and scramble away from it, stumbling on the carpet.
It catches me around the ankle, and its sharp, spindly fingers claw at my calves.
Cerise shrieks and grabs my arm, but then she slips in the murky water too.
Waffles roars and gnashes at the creature, but it slips from Waffles’s jaws easily.
The thing lifts its head, and I nearly let go of Cerise’s hand from fright.
Its face is human-shaped. But it has no eyes or nose.
Just an enormous, smiling mouth. The monster hisses, opening its great mouth to reveal teeth like long, sharp needles.
It reaches out its claws and grabs Cerise by the ankles, dragging her toward it.
“No,” I scream, and I dive for Cerise. I grab her by the wrists and pull, but I can’t find purchase on the floor.
Cerise is screaming, and I try to yank her free, but the thing’s grip is sticky and sure.
“Viola,” Cerise screeches, “your shadows!”
The creature is backing up, pulling Cerise toward the water. Her ankles slip beneath the surface.
“I could hurt you!” I shout back to her.
Cerise’s face is wild and terrified. The thing tugs her harder, dragging her farther into the bog, and she sputters and chokes on the putrid water as she tries to kick it away.
I dig my heels into the slippery carpet, but there’s no traction.
Waffles grabs me by my collar with his mouth and tries to tug us both free.
I’m flailing in the water, splashing, sputtering, struggling to hold on.
I pull Cerise toward me, wrapping my arms under her shoulders. The thing screeches and without warning releases Cerise. It disappears into the water. Cerise falls onto me. I don’t dare let go. Not even for a moment.
“Let’s move!” I yell, trying to yank her to her feet.
“Viola,” she says, and the tone of her voice has me freezing. She’s staring at the water with wide eyes.
I look down, and my stomach sinks. All around us, the water moves, small bubbles popping to the surface. Something else is in the water.
“Go,” she whispers. “Now!”
We sprint for dry ground. Just as we do, the surface bursts open and hands, dozens of slimy, clawed hands, grasp for us.
Waffles takes flight, snapping at the creatures from above.
But there are far too many. I can feel their claws scraping against my shins, grabbing my ankles under the water, but I throw myself forward onto the dry carpet, kicking mercilessly at the things under the water.
“Viola!”
One of them has Cerise around the waist, and in a breath, her slick hand slips from mine.
She stumbles in the water, eyeless faces emerging from all around her. The hands tear at her clothes, raking her legs, grabbing at her coat. I lunge toward her, grabbing her extended hand. Waffles flaps toward me, grabbing me by my collar again and pulling me away from Cerise.
“No,” I yell at him. “We can’t leave her!”
Several of the monsters are half out of the water now, their bony torsos and mouths full of needle teeth exposed, biting and scratching Cerise.
I pull with all my might, clasping her hand with both of mine. But our hands are slick, and I can feel hers slipping from me.
I glance around for anything, anything, that might be of help, and my eyes land on a suit of armor nearby.
“Hold on,” I shout to her and let go of her hand. As soon as I do, she splashes into the water. The creatures claw at her, and she swings her fists wildly at them, kicking and shoving them back into the murky water.
Waffles finally releases me as I clamber toward the suit of armor and grab the sword held in the knight’s hands.
“Cerise!” I toss it in the air, and it lands beside her in the water.
She snatches it, pushes to her feet, and slashes at the monsters. Her teeth are gritted as she roars at them, swinging her sword and cutting into hands and faces.
The sword is dull, but it’s enough that the creatures hiss and cower. More emerge from the water, trying to find a way to get close to the girl furiously brandishing her weapon.
“Viola, go!” she yells over the monsters’ screeching. Reaching into her pocket with one hand and hacking at the monsters with her sword with the other, she retrieves the silver stake and tosses it toward me.
“I’m not leaving you!” I shout back. I bend down and grab the stake from the soggy carpet.
“Don’t be stupid! They want you, not me! Get out of here—I can handle this!”
My eyes flit between her and the creatures. Their grayish blood is now staining the water from where Cerise has sliced into them. I don’t want to leave her.
But Roze.
Cerise fearlessly swings her sword and then looks back at me. “Now!” she screams. “I’ll never forgive you if you let the damned Queen win.”
And I think about what she said about Belladonna, about the Queen’s power over her, and I know—this is Cerise’s battle to fight too, her sacrifice to make.
I force myself to turn away from my friend and sprint down the hall.
Cerise’s cries of fury follow me as I run.